As America's foremost ambassador to space, Carl Sagan has continued to inspire our fascination with exploring beyond Earth. The Library of Congress has digitized its Carl Sagan archives, and several items just collected online give us an amazing new look into the mind of the astronomer.

Some items from the Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive are a fun glimpse into Sagan's personal life: young Carl playing the piano or older Carl writing to a young Neil deGrasse Tyson. Others reveal how seriously he took not just science, but communicating scientific ideas. Through poetry, novels, and even video games, he compellingly argued for exploring space—and searching for extraterrestrial life.

Take a look through some of the items that caught our eye, below.

Home movies of a very young Carl Sagan playing the piano and playing outside.